The Indian Community
At the start of the war there were approximately 32,000 Indians living in Kuala Lumpur, or just under twenty per cent of the total population. In Selangor as a whole, the population was 160,000 or about 23 per cent of the population, reflecting the weight of the plantation sector. Though Tamils dominated, the Indian community reflected the complex mosaic of peoples, with Sikhs, Bengalis, Gujaratis, Punjabis, Chettiars, Malayalam all represented. About two-thirds of the Indian population were male. This was because many had come as indentured labourers – brought to Malaya on fixed-term contracts and with employers favouring male workers because they carried out the hard work on the estates. Selangor’s Indian community was generally poor and one-third of young (20-24 years old) Indian males in Kuala Lumpur were illiterate in their own language and very few could communicate in English. Reflecting social conservatism and historic poverty, illiteracy rates amongst women and the elderly were even higher. In Selangor in 1947 less than twenty per cent of Indian women could read or write in their own language and barely any (less than five per cent) were literate in English. Reflecting the educational advantages of urban living, however, 17 per cent of Indian women living in Kuala Lumpur could read English. Another marked characteristic was that - like the Chinese - about forty per cent were first generation migrants, with three-quarters of this number being born in the ‘Madras Presidency’ (Tamil). They had come to Malaya to work, often with the intention (many did) of returning home once they had saved a nest-egg of money.
Various social and political consequences flowed from these close links to India. There was little or no sense of being ‘Malayan’; national affinity was ‘Indian’ and the political and social outlook of the community was largely shaped and moulded by events at home. Reflecting the politics of pre-independence India, many were inherently hostile to the British, and the Japanese occupation helped give voice to these aspirations. Equally, however, the divisions and rivalries between the different peoples and religions of the sub-continent were given full range in distant Malaya, and the Indian ‘community’ during the war, and thereafter, was riven with internal feuding and tensions. Capt. Durrani, a Muslim British Indian Army officer who worked alongside Japanese and Indian intelligence organisations in occupied Malaya, reserves his greatest vitriol and hatred for his Hindu counterparts. The politics of the sub-continent were being played out in full in the tropical setting of Malaya.
Though the politics of the sub-continent set the context, local events helped fashion and shape political outlook. Before the war, a set of labour disputes in Selangor helped stoke local Indian resentment towards the British. Strikes by estate workers in Klang in 1940 and at the Batu Arang coal mine in northern Selangor had been suppressed by the British, with the ring-leaders deported to India and some strikers killed. The British had clearly wanted to ‘send a message’ and had attributed much of the blame for this industrial agitation on ‘communist subversives’ and ‘nationalists’ within the Central Indian Association of Malaya (CIAM) which from the early 1930s had developed a strong following amongst estate workers. There had been a public and international outcry at the brutal treatment meted out to the strikers and the government had sought to mediate and address some of the main demands of the CIAM, but the wounds were still raw when the Japanese arrived in late 1941. Thus, as war beckoned, many estate workers were radicalised and readily supported the calls of the Indian nationalist movement.
The Indian Independence League and the Indian National Army
Members of Kuala Lumpur’s Indian community were amongst the first to see opportunity in the ‘New Order’. On 20 January 1942, just nine days after their arrival, the Governor of Selangor, Colonel Fujiyama, and the Mayor of Kuala Lumpur, Major Fujiwara, officiated at a ceremony at the Kuala Lumpur Police Depot where, in front of several hundred Indians and the ‘flags of the Rising Sun and the Indian nation’, they formally approved the launch of the Indian Independence League (IIL). The IIL was an avowedly nationalist organisation and its objective was to remove the colonial British from India and launch an independent nation. Its senior officers reflected the diversity of Indian nationalities; its President was Dr. M.K. Lukshumeyeh (Punjabi), his deputy was Budh Singh (Sikh) and the two secretaries were Neelakanda (Tamil) and P.M. Dalal (Bengali). In late January 1942, even before the fall of Singapore, the Malay Mail ran an article promoting Indian nationalism under the headline ‘To Raise an Army in Malaya’. In time this aspiration would materialise as the Indian National Army (INA).
Following the Japanese occupation, Indian nationalist activity in Malaya blossomed and many troops of the defeated British Indian regiments, and Indian civilians living in Malaya, flocked to join the newly formed IIL. The Japanese were adept at portraying a positive vision of an Asia under Japanese leadership, bereft of European colonialists. A typical newspaper heading of the period read ‘Anglo Saxon superiority complex humanity’s greatest woe’; sentiment which tapped directly into the long- standing sense of grievance and humiliation felt by many of Malaya’s communities towards their former colonial masters. The Japanese were able to offer the prospect of ‘Jai Hind’ or ‘Victory in India’, which became the great rallying cry of the INA when it was launched in Syonan (Singapore) in July 1943 by the nationalist leader, Subhas Chandra Bose. In front of a large and ecstatic crowd he held up the goal of ‘bharat mata ki jai’ or ‘victory for Mother India’ and independence from the British. He also announced the formation of a new Indian army, the INA, to include a women’s section – the Rani of Jhansie Regiment. The announcement coincided with a visit to Singapore by Prime Minister Hideki Tojo. In a stroke of genius, the Japanese press agency, the Domei, issued a press release noting that these were ‘two men of amazing vitality, unflagging energy and unbounded enthusiasm’. Here were the Japanese comparing their great war leader, General Tojo, with Subhas Chandra Bose – what better evidence could there be that the Japanese were truly committed to a fair and balanced relationship?
Kuala Lumpur’s Indian community responded vigorously and enthusiastically to this sense of moment. On 5 July 1943, the Japanese Jikeidan (a Japanese local auxiliary body) organised a ‘colourful pageant’ on the padang in which all of the city’s main communities gathered to celebrate the sixth anniversary of the ‘China Incident’; the date that Japanese troops ‘responded’ to Chinese aggression in Shanghai. The Governor of Selangor, General Katayama, used the occasion to warn against the ‘insidious British influences that still exist in Malaya’, while pointing a finger directly at the Chinese whom, he said, ‘must make the best efforts for the sake of the new born Chinese in their native countries’. Such veiled threats were not needed for the Indian community. The INA used the ‘pageant’ as a platform for its recruitment drive and two days later the Rani of Jhansie Regiment held its inaugural meeting in Selangor. At the same time, the Indian ‘Bharat Youth Training Centre’ based in Kuala Lumpur began to send young men to Singapore for follow-on training, with much talk of sacrifice and the price to be paid for freedom.
Shortly after the Singapore rally, Subhas Chandra Bose travelled to Kuala Lumpur where he addressed a large crowd at the padang – many of them POWs from the British Indian Army. He arrived in an open-top car, presidential style, with two motor-bike outriders. As he spoke in Hindustani the (mostly) Tamil crowd could not understand him but the mood was infectious and his speech was translated into Tamil by an IIL luminary, Chidambran. One IIL member later noted ‘The roads were covered with people… it was a sea of heads. Bose spoke for forty-five minutes and replied [to] questions from the crowd. Registration of members started immediately after. His speech was moving, and with such feeling created by him, wives freely donated their jewellery and the men handed over money to the cause.’
In a further example of inspired rhetoric, in early August the Japanese announced that Burma was now an independent nation as they had, following victory over the British, disbanded their military civil government. Whatever the re
ality, this announcement showed to those who wanted to believe it that the Japanese were committed to independence in the sub-continent. In December 1943, the Selangor IIL held a large public meeting to ‘celebrate a promise by the Dai Nippon government to transfer the Andaman and Nicobar Islands to the Provisional Government of Azad Hind’. These were indeed heady days, but the INA was about to be bloodied in the bitter battle for the Arakan and the Japanese would never make good on their promise of setting up a Provisional Government in the Andaman Islands. Even in this early period of euphoria, seeds of future difficulty were present. In September 1943, the Selangor IIL publicly appealed to all those who had promised contributions to honour their pledges and they were then forced to repeat this request a month later; public support therefore not quite matching private commitment. One wealthy INA supporter, the prominent Sikh fabric trader Hardial Singh, had warmly welcomed the incoming Japanese forces into Kuala Lumpur, posting prominent adverts in the newspapers, and had then helped collect large amounts of gold and jewellery for Subhas Chandra Bose. But illustrating the deeply fractious nature of Indian politics, he was denounced by his enemies as a British spy and was subjected to lengthy torture and interrogation by the Kempetei before finally being released.
A Promise Betrayed
Beneath the bravura, not all was well within the Indian community. The plantation industry was beginning to suffer the consequences of a collapse in demand for rubber and from the upheavals of war. From early 1943, shortage and famine were becoming commonplace and the impoverished estate communities were amongst the first to be affected. The IIL introduced welfare programmes and sought support and funds for feeding centres and hospitals, but the response by the Japanese to growing hardship was hardly sympathetic. In July 1943, the English language Malai Sinpo newspaper carried the banner headline ‘People of Malai have little to grumble about’ and then noted ‘In war-time rough must be taken with the smooth’.
By late 1943 and into 1944, military reversals in Burma and the failings of the Japanese to fulfil their promises to the IIL and the INA sapped Indian nationalist euphoria. To the bitter end, the Tamil Nesan newspaper continued to support Subhas Chandra Bose’s commitment to a military victory over the British while in Kuala Lumpur a die-hard core of nationalists continued to press for all out military conflict with Britain. In March 1945, the IIL Selangor Branch hosted a talk by Mr. N.K. Banerji, President of the Penang Azad Hind Club, who urged faith in the power of Japan, whose soldiers he said should be a role model for young Indians. Noting the many rumours then circulating about Japanese military reversals, Banerji urged the Indian community to ignore such ‘lies’ and rather recall that it was only through Japan’s victories that Indian independence had become possible. Later that month, on 21 March 1945, the Indian community was urged to celebrate ‘Azad Hind’ day by flying the Hinomaru and the Indian national flag and to attend a set of rallies throughout the state.
‘with a vividness rare in mere statistics’
In scarcely concealed words of excitement - an emotion not usually associated with civil servants - the 1947 census compiler Moroboë Vencenzo Del Tufo noted that the wartime losses to the Indian community, ‘with a vividness rare in mere statistics’, had led to a marked impact on population levels and on Malaya’s demographic profile. Pre-war, the Indians had represented fourteen per cent of the population of Malaya but by 1947 they had dropped to ten per cent. In Selangor, the Indian population dropped in absolute terms by seven per cent during the war years, and as a proportion of the overall population it declined from 23 per cent to 20 per cent. If one had to look for the single most telling consequence of the war years it would be the story behind these dry statistics.
In 1942, the Indian male population (aged 16-60) of Selangor and Kuala Lumpur was estimated at around 55,500. The true number is not known with any accuracy but by comparing Japanese figures and post-war British estimates at least one third of them, or 18-20,000 men, were sent as labourers on Japanese war projects to Burma, Thailand and Sumatra, and even further afield to Japan and the outer reaches of Japanese occupied territory. Of these, by the end of the war over 10-12,000 (about two-thirds of those dispatched) were reported dead or unaccounted for. At least one in five of Selangor’s Indian male working population, therefore, would die as a consequence of Japan’s war needs. The removal of so many able-bodied young men for war work caused labour shortages. An unintended consequence of the disappearance of so many men was the opening of work opportunities for women. In mid-March 1945, the Tamil Nesan newspaper reported that ‘since all the talented and strong male workers have been sent on important war work’ the Selangor Indian Independence Council was seeking to recruit female workers for offices, banks, factories and hospitals. Another consequence was that the Japanese authorities began to draft large numbers of Javanese workers to fill the vacuum in the Malayan labour market.
Deterioration of Life on the Estates
While the Japanese war projects were wreaking carnage on conscripted workers, life in the ‘native lines’ of Selangor’s plantations and estates remained characterised by poverty, illiteracy, alienation, and an extraordinary isolation. Located deep in the Malayan countryside, these communities were particularly vulnerable to exploitation. The British colonialists had early on noted that the south Indian Tamils were an immensely resilient and hard-working people, prepared to grind for minimal return, but were also generally passive and quiescent. Just as the British had long exploited these characteristics, so too did the Japanese. Conditions in the plantations, even in the best of times, were bad but in wartime conditions became appalling. The market for rubber and palm oil collapsed. Unemployment and famine began to stalk the estates. Against this background, the recruitment of young male workers for war-related projects seems less surprising.
P. Ramasamy’s research into the Pal Melayu Estate near Malacca highlights the brutalisation of plantation life during the war, and the intensification of divisions and animosities between the various classes and races working within the plantations. He noted that in the absence of European managers the Japanese relied upon the estate’s middle-managers, the kerani. They were often of a different caste from the estate workers; many were of Ceylonese or Malayalam extraction. They controlled pay and food and often encouraged young male workers to enlist for Japanese war work so that they could earn a commission, and in some cases coerce the wives of absent husbands to become their wartime mistresses. Similarly, there were also cases where Tamil foremen, kangani, exploited their authority to take on mistresses and generally lord it over the remaining estate workers. Such kerani and kangani who had exploited their positions during the Japanese occupation, however, set themselves up as targets for later retribution and during the interregnum that followed the Japanese surrender many were killed by bandits. The war years also left a lasting bitterness and anger as the returning British, far from chastising the kerani for their role in supporting Japanese war aims, often praised them for keeping the estates together.
The Japanese did not deliberately and as a policy (unlike their policies towards the Chinese and European POWs) seek to punish or to harm the Indian community but their brutal neglect and the harsh realities of the ‘death railways’ resulted in enormous loss of life. The Japanese, despite their rhetoric of a common anti-colonial affinity, showed little respect or concern for the Indian soldiers of the INA, their political leaders and most certainly not for the thousands of largely illiterate and impoverished south Indian workers who toiled in conditions of incredible harshness and danger on war-related work projects. By 1945, however, save amongst some die-hards, the euphoria had gone and instead the Indian community was confronted by massive loss of life for its young men, and famine and shortage for many estate workers and their families. This also led to introspection and not a little bitterness within the Indian community, with the leaders of the largely rural Tamils noting that the political and military leadership of the IIL and the INA had done little or nothing to ste
m or prevent the grievous loss of life on the Thai-Burma railway. This indifference, they believed, was due to the dominance of educated, urban, mostly north Indians within the nationalist movement.
The Malay Community
Malays comprised just over ten per cent of Kuala Lumpur’s population. Most lived in Kampung Baru, which was set in 223 acres located between Batu Road and the Gombak River. It was an ‘island’ of Malay Muslims in a largely Chinese town. The settlement had been set aside in 1899 by the British as the ‘Malay Agricultural Settlement’ with the toe-curlingly paternalistic objective ‘to enable them [the Malays] to reap some of the advantages of the current prosperity’ and ‘to give them a Malay-English education’. Attempts to teach craft skills, however, were abandoned after five years due to lack of interest and efforts by the British to inculcate their ideas of progress were abandoned in the face of quiet but persistent disinterest. Kampung Baru remained something of a novelty. In the late 1930s one British administrator noted that the Sunday fair there ‘is the most interesting show place in Kuala Lumpur because more of the Malay can be seen there than in any other place’. Across Selangor, as befitted a largely rural community, the Malays constituted a much larger seventeen per cent of the state’s population. It had grown and developed more naturally than the migrant Chinese and Indian communities and there was a straightforward balance between the genders and the age profile was more ‘natural’. Illiteracy rates, however, remained stubbornly high with more than half the Malay community of Selangor unable to read or write. Reflecting traditional prejudices, this level rose to 72 per cent for Malay women. In Kuala Lumpur, however, literacy levels were over 70 per cent for men and 44 per cent for women, illustrating once more the educational the benefits of urbanisation.
Kuala Lumpur at War 1939-1945 Page 12